Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.10
Last-Modified: 2000/08/01
Q. No, Mr Irving. It is you who has built a huge mountain
out of a tiny little mole hill. Assume two completely
contrary hypotheses either of which could be right:
Hitler does know what happens to the Jews when they
arrive, and when they will arrive they are going to be
killed. That is one hypothesis. He and Himmler would
very well still need to talk about how to get the process
continuing and continuing and continuing, until they had
all gone. That is hypothesis one.
A. Hypothesis two, Hitler does not know, but, of course, he
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knows about the deportations because he has authorised it.
Q. So on either hypothesis this is a neutral document?
A. If your first hypothesis is correct, if these two men are
in cahoots, if I can use gangster slang, why would Himmler
need to use euphemisms?
Q. Because they are actually talking about how to do the
evacuations, the emigrations. You cannot kill somebody in
a gas chamber or a pit somewhere near Lublin unless you
have them there in the first place. You have to evacuate
them emigrate them from, say, Berlin or Vienna or Rome or
wherever it may be and you have to do that. It is a matter
of logistics. It costs money. The trains are needed by
the army. It is a necessary stage in the process, and
there is no reason on earth why Himmler and Hitler should
not have a conversation about that, is there?
A. But if they are in cahoots why do we find nowhere in all
these hundreds of sheets these agenda, telephone notes and
all the rest of it anything specific to bear out the
notion that Hitler had ordered the killing of the European Jews?
Q. But you have constructed out of this perfectly natural,
normal, neutral document and discussion, if you do not
know the background, a discussion about how to continue
the deportations, and how to make this into German
"labensround", this area of Poland, Lublin, you have
erected on the basis of that flimsy platform, this
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sentence "Himmler meanwhile continued to pull the wool
over Hitler's eyes"?
A. Because there no reference in this --
Q. Why should there be?
A. -- to any of the sinister things that had happening,
whatever they are.
Q. Why should there be? This is not a deceptive document.
A. It is. He is using the euphemisms, which your own
experts
agree are the euphemisms for the extermination
operation
going on.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you accept that, so far as Himmler is
concerned that when he said "ausvanderung" he was
really
in his own mind visualizing what was going on in the -
-
A. We have a terrible problem with these euphemisms, my
Lord,
and this is that the word, the same word can mean
different things used by the same person at different
times.
Q. -- well, take this note, do you regard "ausvanderung"
meaning --
A. It could quite possibly mean that, that in his own
mind he
is referring to that, because he knows perfectly well
what
is going on.
Q. -- namely?
A. Shall we just leave it in vague terms, that something
ugly
is happening?
Q. No. You are the historian; what do you think that
Himmler
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in his own mind had in --
A. He knows that the Jews --
Q. -- contemplation when he used the word "ausvanderung"?
A. -- he knows that the Jews are being liquidated and
that
very few of them are surviving, as we know from the
entry
in Goebbels' diaries of March 1942 which is quite
definitely an SS. In other words, the Himmler
document. It
has gone to Goebbels and has told Goebbels that of
those
who are deported and I think Goebbels actually
mentions
Lublin, 60 per cent may be fit for work, but 40 per
cent
had to be liquidated or the other way round.
Q. But there is no reason to suppose that Hitler would
ever
have seen this note of 22nd September 1942?
A. No, but unfortunately we are confronted with a
problem, we
can only write history safely on the basis of the
paper
before us. But it may well be that two or three pages
later we come across a document which gives one more
clue
in the direction that I am trying to lead the readers.
I think it is dishonest just to pick on one fragment
and
say, "Mr Irving has only mentioned this". I have
found
this document. I have mentioned. I have put it on
the
slate for people to read it, and later on we will find
another document and we will refer to it just the same
as
your Lordship quite rightly pointed out that I had
mentioned that 10th February 1942 document earlier on.
It
is there somewhere buried in the book and anyone can
play
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this exercise of yanking one pebble out of the wall
and
saying "Mr Irving has only painted this one pebble",
when
the whole picture is there in the book at the end of
it.
Q. I am not being critical at the moment, I am simply
trying
to understand your thought processes when you approach
this document and as I understand it, correct me if I
am
wrong, I am sorry, Mr Rampton, to go on, you accept
that
Himmler had it mind that there was mass extermination
of
Jews going on?
A. My Lord --
Q. And that that is what he was referring to when he
writes
"ausvanderung" of the Jews?
A. -- I have to be careful, my Lord , because--
Q. In paragraph 1?
A. -- I am constantly aware that I am under oath here and
I am also relating something that happened 35 years
ago
when I wrote this manuscript for the first time. These
particular words you are looking at were written by me
probably at the end of the 1960s, so I have to be very
careful when you ask me what my thought processes
were.
I can reconstruct them, but that is probably not a
very
useful exercise. I have to say that I would have been
aware that later on we have what is called the Korheir
Report, which is referred to earlier today, where
Himmler
has said: "Redraft this report in a form that we can
show
it to the Fuhrer", which strongly suggests that there
is
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wool pulling going on. That is why I feel safe in
asserting a sentence like that here, because I regard
this
document as being evidence that quite probably what
happened on this occasion was a certain amount of wool
pulling. That somebody was being "horn swaggled", as
the
Americans say.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Mr Rampton, I interrupted.
MR RAMPTON: It is all right. I do not think I have many
more
to ask about that particular sentence. I have made my
suggestion. I would like you to look, however, at
something I said I would ask you some questions about,
the
earlier part of this passage which begins on page
466,.
Himmler kept his own counsel. From his
papers
it emerges that on 9th July his SS Police Chief
Kruger... already briefed him on the solution of the
Jewish problem. On the 16th he visited Hitler.
Photographs in the modern Polish archives"; do you
remember, this is not a memory test, I just wonder
whether
you remember where you got the information, Mr Irving,
that Himmler visited Hitler on the 16th?
A. I would have to go back to my card index to check. It
could have been from a number of sources.
Q. There is an entry in Witte which says that he had
lunch
with Hitler on the 14th, but that is something you
could
not have had, because that is one of the entries that
has
only recently emerged from Moscow?
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A. I would not have had that one.
Q. No.
A. Except, no, I had Himmler's -- I have Himmler's diary
here. I will just check it.
Q. You see if you can find anything for the 14th July.
What
have you put, the 16th?
A. The 16th July we only have the telephone notes.
Q. What, you have put the 16th?
A. No, the 16th July we only have the telephone notes.
Q. Yes. I think that is what I have here, yes. Certain,
it
is he saw Hitler either the day before, or a couple of
days before he went to Auschwitz, is it not?
A. Yes.
Q. "Photographs in the modern Polish archives show him
[indeed they do] visiting the immense synthetic rubber
plant. They also show him at the camp itself, on the
17th
and touring the concentration camp itself on the 18th
in
the company of his Chief Engineer, SS General Hans
Cammler
and Fritz Bracht, the gaulieter of Upper Silesia.
Whatever
later historians would claim Hitler himself never
visited
any concentration camp, let alone Auschwitz.
Historians
would also claim that Himmler witnessed the
liquidation of
a train load of Jews on this occasion. This is
apocryphal". Blah-blah-blah I will not bother to read
this.
Can I go down to the history again?
Starting it
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on July 19th 1942: "On July 19th 1942, the day after
Himmler's tour of Auschwitz, he issued a written order
to
Kruger 'I decree that the transfer of the entire
Jewish
population of the General Government is to be carried
out
and completed by December 31st 1942'." That is a
document
we will have to look at a bit later, Mr Irving.
A. Yes.
Q. "Hitler might still be dreaming of Madagascar, but the
head office of the Eastern Railroad at Krakow reported
since July 22nd one train load of 5,000 Jews --"
A. Can I just interrupt there and point to the word
"dreaming
of Madagascar", I think that adequately sums up the
earlier passage.
Q. You say "dreaming", I say talking in a camouflage way,
but
perhaps it really does not matter. It is not a
reality. "Since July 22nd one train load of 5,000
Jews
has been running from Warsaw... to Treblinka every day
and
in addition a train load of 5,000 Jews leaves Przemysl
twice a week for Belsec". Can I stop there. Mr
Irving?
A. Yes.
Q. We will look at some more documents in relation to
those
transports this afternoon. Why was it -- in fact, I
think
the figures are not quite right, but suppose they are
for
the minute, why was it that one train load a day of
5,000
Jews was going from Warsaw to Treblinka and one twice
a
week of 5,000 Jews to Belsec from the place which
begins
. P-90
with P?
A. The documents do not tell us, but perhaps it might be
useful if we had a look at a map which will show us
exactly.
Q. I am going to, with his Lordship's permission, I am
going
to give you -- this is new to me, I got it last night,
so
I have not been hiding it away, it is an original
German
army I think military railway map?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it one of the ones you --
MR RAMPTON: No, your Lordship, has not got it. I had not
it
until last night.
THE WITNESS: I certainly have not had it.
MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving has not had it and so everyone can
have
it now, and there is one for the witness (same
handed).
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, we are moving on to another
issue
really now.
MR RAMPTON: Yes, we are. I was actually going to suggest
that
I stopped there because I was going to ask just one
question, and then I could give Mr Irving time to have
a
bit of lunch and perhaps look forward at some of the
documents which he has referred to here.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Only if he feels he has time to do it
over
lunch.
MR RAMPTON: But I am now going to do what I said I would
do
this morning, which is to look at the true scale and
nature of what actually happened. This is awkward, I
am
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sorry, I should have had sellotaped together, but I
did
not have time. If you just hold them roughly on top
of
the other because that is how it works, my Lord.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow.
MR RAMPTON: We see Warsaw at the top of the map, then you
if
go out the key tells us that a double line is a two
track
railway, and a single line is a single track railway,
which is logical enough, is it not? The key is in the
bottom right hand corner.
A. Yes.
Q. Then there is that another marking, which we do not
have
to bother about, which is the actual, I think, German
railway as opposed to the Russian one or the Polish
one.
A different gauge, I think. The line runs north/east
or
east/north/east out of Warsaw to a place called
Malkinia;
do you see that?
A. Yes.
Q. Just on the border with White Russia?
A. Yes.
Q. And there is a sharp right turn and the first dot down
that single line is Treblinka.
A. Yes.

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